


who are we to define tragedy?

by kbaycolt



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, mentions of his siblings, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-07 00:05:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18227231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbaycolt/pseuds/kbaycolt
Summary: "Oh, Icarus! For all you have fallen, still you flew! And for a moment, the sun knew of you too."//I was put here on this earth to save the world.My name is Number Five.\\





	who are we to define tragedy?

_My name is Number Five._

_I_ _was put here on this earth to save the world._

_No one told me how hard it would be._

_No one said to me, "you're going to suffer, boy, and you're going to feel immense pain. Your soul will ache and your mind will break, but you are here for a purpose bigger than yourself."_

_No one told me these things._

_I simply look inside myself and I know._

_But I don't regret any of it. I would do it all again if I had to._

_Because I see my siblings and how their smiles have faded, how the bitter, jaded words spew from cracked lips like they're begging for a fight. I see my family crumbling and tearing at each other in a manner of vicious lions. I see my father's absent, harsh hand guide us further into estrangement._

_And I cannot bear to leave them, because that is not all I see._

_I see teasing smirks and ringing laughter, eyes twinkling with life despite our childhood. I see love and light and healing._

_I see mistakes and jagged edges, remedies and soft words. I see love despite pain._

_I see hope, and this is what urges me to stay._

_Of course, I could not even entertain the notion of leaving before I complete the task before me._

_Perhaps I was not made to live, to merely exist._

_Perhaps I was made to fight._

_And damn me to hell if I don't go down without a fight._

* * *

The first time Five breaks, he is thirteen.

He skids to a halt in a broken and burned world, rubble crunching beneath his feet and his heart seizing with terror because this was not his intention, he never meant to go here.

His lungs heave with acrid smoke and his feet pound against the scorched asphalt, falling to his knees before his destroyed home.

Gone.

Somewhere, he knows his father is laughing in his grave.

A piece of his soul chips off when he finds his siblings buried in the debris.

The next time he breaks, he is much older, and a woman named The Handler extends her hand to him, all sharp edges and silky words piercing him like a butterfly to a corkboard.

He takes the offer without a second thought.

He breaks again when he tips back a bottle and tries to get blackout drunk, drowning his sorrows the haze of burning whiskey. He isn't enough. All alone, in this big empty world that goes to hell in four days.

All this, and he is still not enough.

Before he slips into unconsciousness, he blearily thinks of an old Greek myth, of a laughing boy with waxen wings who flew too close to the sun. The moral of that story was to beware of the unattainable, but all Five can glean from it is Icarus delighted in his descent, and how it was the ocean who drowned him and not the sun.

Five is clinging to a thread when they discover the body of Harold Jenkins, grotesquely mutilated and a chest full of knives. He wonders absently how it must have felt, to have such sharp points digging into your heart and ribcage. Is it any different than how Five has felt his entire life?

The Apocalypse is over, Diego claims.

But it can't be. Because if it is, that means everything Five has done leading up to this moment is for nothing. Everything he sacrificed is for naught because in the end, someone else landed the killing blow.

Salt in his shrapnel wound would hurt less than this.

Five nearly snaps when Klaus declares him an addict and his drug the Apocalypse. When he flings the eyeball into the wall, the one he had carried for over forty-five years, the constant weight looming in the back of his mind and wrapped up in his pocket, he feels a bit of his soul shatter on impact.

_Figuratively, but that works too._

His heart tears right in half when he leaves Delores in that department store. His only companion, the only person who had ever seen him for who he truly is.

His soul is still intact. He desperately tries to pick up the pieces, trying to shove them back into place and make him whole again, but he knows that will always be impossible because Reginald Hargreeves took a slice of him to the grave.

He wants to scream and demand Klaus summon his father so he can demand his childhood back from the bastard.

Instead, he grits his teeth and returns to his family.

* * *

_So, in the end, I failed._

_Truly spectacularly, might I add._

_I could not stop the one thing I worked my entire life for. I could not keep together whatever sort of broken family we are._

_Ah, but the universe is ever merciful. I have been given a second chance._

_There is a hole in my heart from Ben and my childhood missing from my soul, but I am slowly picking up the pieces. My fingers bleed from the shards and each new slice flares with pain. I am burned thoroughly, inside and out, because at the ripe young age of thirteen I deemed myself worthy of flying._

_The sun may have sent me spiraling into the water, but it was the salty ocean that filled my lungs and buried my legacy._

_However, as most people tend to overlook, Icarus boldly threw back his head and grinned as he fell._ _For those who smile as they drown and laugh as they fall, who are we to define tragedy, after all?_

_My name is Number Five._

_In the end, I was created to fight-_

_-and live._

_(and my story is going nowhere)_

**Author's Note:**

> "Golden child,  
> Lion boy;  
> Tell me what it's like to conquer.
> 
> Fearless child,  
> Broken boy;  
> Tell me what it's like to burn."


End file.
